Poets, whores and the thin line between

My heels click too loudly against the silky silence of the mahogany wood floor. So I tip-toe like a moron to my seat. As the lady at the ticket booth reminds me in an insistent whisper: I am late.

Not a single one of the poets in this room has read my work, not even the ones that I call “friend” or “lover”. My poetry is straightforward in a way that would be disconcertingly inferior to the poets at this reading. That is, if they gave a flying fuck about my poetry, which they do not.

The first poet introduces his next poem as a story about his grandfather. He then proceeds to read for fifteen minutes about willows and each breath of fog. I wonder if even this poet’s own grandfather knows what the fuck he’s talking about. I wonder if his grandfather would say, “Yes, that’s exactly how I would describe my dementia, like a goddamn fucking cloudy breeze or piece of shit tree in the wind.”

I respect the poets in this room who are able to do what I cannot. They are able to make their professional lives as poets. They are able to perform as apolitical props of the art world.

The final reader is much more entertaining and current than those previous. He slips in a reference to Prince, which I find in hindsight insidiously sexually repressive. He makes a joke about supporting the autonomy of sex workers through his tips. But he would never want his daughter to become one.

I do not laugh nor do I clap as others do. I do not chuckle even. The nature of sex work is that one gets paid very handsomely to, on rare occasion, get degraded. Everyone has their limits and those limits are best made clearly. Some do not kiss on the lips, some do not do greek, Most do not ever take dick without a condom. It is only in the company of career poets that boundaries are rendered irrelevant, violated with out appropriate lubricant or protection.

It hurts.

I guess I’m supposed to be ashamed.

But I’m not.

I wonder when was the last time any of these poets wrote something that actually moved someone. A real person. The kind of person who works a job that this poet prick would never want his daughter to work. He would rather her starve, I guess, or live off of his pretentious means.